The Vision for Volunteering was published in July 2023 and we are building on this research and its findings. We developed a series of workshops to empower and support communities to bring our ‘Vision for Volunteering’ report to life, culminating in a celebration of volunteering this summer (2025).
In 2022, we set out alongside Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action to understand the experience of volunteering in Oxfordshire, how volunteering has been changed and shaped by recent events, and what partners, systems, stakeholders and citizens need to do together to ensure a thriving, inclusive, sustainable future for volunteering in Oxfordshire.
The publication (in July 2023) of our Vision for Volunteering was timely, coinciding with Oxfordshire County Council’s Voluntary and Community Sector Strategy and the national Vision for Volunteering.
In this report, volunteering refers to all kinds of unpaid support offered by people in their communities. That includes volunteering with community groups, registered charities, mutual aid groups, faith groups, lunch clubs, community sports teams, environmental groups and more. It also includes things like helping neighbours who are struggling, serving on the parish council, organising a street event, volunteering for a PTA, running a neighbourhood WhatsApp or Facebook group, helping produce a local community publication, running a local community campaign, or raising funds for a local cause.
We wanted to hear from as many people as possible and particularly from groups which are doing new and different things, or operating in a new way, or who have traditionally been overlooked. Over 350 people from across Oxfordshire, volunteering with more than 470 different organisations, contributed information for our Vision for Volunteering.
Using a combination of the themes and the key findings, we were able to develop 10 core principles for our Vision for Volunteering.
- Include everyone
- Keep it personal
- Value the person
- Nurture relationships
- Offer flexibility
- Make it enjoyable
- Training and support matters
- Create space for experimentation
- Fund it
- Build community
Read the reports to learn more about our findings!